The present invention relates to a telephone transfer apparatus, and more particularly to a telephone transfer apparatus for use in a facsimile network system, which is capable of carrying out telephone communications effectively.
After transmission of documents via facsimile communications, a telephone conversation may be required to notify transmission of documents, supplementary explanation of the transmitted documents and the like. In case of such a telephone conversation being required, an operator at a transmitting station is able to set a voice request mode to call up an operator at the remote station for telephone conversation after the transmission of documents.
In this case, however, the operator of the transmitting station who has set the voice request by means of an input means, is required to wait beside the facsimile terminal until the transmission of documents is completed. Since the time of reception cannot be predicted at the remote station, a person or an operator with whom the operator of the transmitting station wants to have a conversation is not always being nearby the facsimile terminal. In some cases, consequently, the remote station cannot respond to a call caused by the voice request.
In order to eliminate the difficulties accompanying the conventional system, an apparatus which is adapted to call an extension telephone in the remote station according to an instruction from the transmitting station and to communicate a message recorded in advance has been proposed in Published Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Nos. 195974/1987 and 16163/1989.
The conventional apparatus is adapted to call up the extension telephone of the remote station according to the instruction from the transmitting station and therefore the remote station has been limited to a facsimile terminal which has such specific functions. At the transmitting station, it is necessary to know the extension telephone number related to the remote station in advance.
In addition, there is a problem that only a fixed message can be communicated.
Further, with another conventional apparatus, the operator of the remote station is called up by sending an alarm sound or the like to the remote station. Consequently, the call according to the voice request can hardly be captured by the operator at the remote station if the operator is unskilled or sounding noise is excessively loud at the remote station.
To overcome such unfavorable conditions, a facsimile terminal has been proposed, which is adapted to produce a voice sent from the calling side (transmitting station) through a loud speaker means, instead of the call by the alarm sound in Published Unexamined Japanese Patent Application No. 151259/1988.
With such a conventional facsimile terminal, an excessively loud voice to inform a message is harsh to other persons in ambience and therefore the range of information by the speaker has been limited. Accordingly, if the operator is far away from the facsimile terminal, the operator cannot be aware of such alarm indicating the arrival of a message.
In addition, also at the transmission side, the operator should have stayed beside the facsimile terminal until the completion of the transmission of the document and the main work of the operator has been unavoidably interrupted.
Thus, the conventional apparatus is disadvantageous in that, if a telephone conversation is attempted according to the voice request either at the transmitting station or at the remote station, the operators would be restricted to stay beside the facsimile terminal until the transmission of the documents is finished, thereby resulting in degrading in work efficiency.